Soft tissue includes skin, muscle, fat, connective tissue (e.g. collagen fibers), nervous tissue (e.g. neurons, motor neuron and neuromuscular junction), cartilage, veins, artery, body fluids (e.g. blood, lymph and/or other body liquids) and other soft structures.
Human skin is composed of three basic elements: the epidermis, the dermis and the hypodermis or so called sub cutis. The dermis consists of collagen, elastic tissue and reticular fibers. The hypodermis is the lowest layer (structure) of skin and contains hair follicle roots, lymphatic vessels, collagen tissue, nerves and also subcutaneous fat forming an adipose tissue.
Adipose tissue is formed by aggregation mostly of adipose cells mostly containing stored fats as triglycerides. Triglycerides are esters of three fatty acid chains and the alcohol glycerol (fat). Most adipose tissue accumulations result from fat primarily from food, when energy intake derived from food exceeds daily energy needs. This may result in an increase in fat cell size or fat cell number or both. Mature fat cells are very large, ranging up to 40 microns in diameter and containing as much as 95% lipid (fat) by volume. The subcutaneous adipose tissue layer may be thin (about 1 cm or less) in humans of slight or moderate body type. It is possible to distinguish different types of adipose tissue. Adipose tissue may mean visceral (fat) adipose tissue located adjacent to internal organs, subcutaneous adipose tissue located beneath the skin but above skeletal muscle and/or adipose tissue located between the muscle fibers.
Excess adipose tissue may be perceived as aesthetically undesirable. Excess adipose tissue may lead to health complications
Dieting and exercise may result in reduction of adipose tissue and weight loss. However, the reduction in adipose tissue volume occurs rather unpredictably from all anatomical areas. This can leave the areas intended for reduction (e.g. the abdomen) largely unaffected, even after significant body weight loss. Dieting and exercise may also cause discomfort, physical and psychic stress. Various invasive and non-invasive methods have been developed to remove unwanted subcutaneous fat from specific areas of the body.
The main invasive method is surgical-assisted liposuction, where selected volumes of adipose tissue are mechanically aspirated out of the patient at desired anatomical sites of the body. However, liposuction procedures are invasive and can be painful and traumatic, with many undesirable side effects and risks. Lipodissolve is another invasive procedure involving a series of drug injections intended to dissolve and permanently remove small pockets of fat from various parts of the body. It is also known as mesotherapy, lipozap, lipotherapy or injection lipolysis. Lipodissolve has many disadvantages and risks also, to the extent that various medical associations have issued health warnings against using it.
The non-invasive methods concentrate on the acceleration of the lipolysis as the natural process of the fat reduction. This can be achieved in several ways. One of them is application of pharmaceuticals accelerating the lipolysis. However, when applied topically they tend only to affect the outermost layers of the skin, rarely penetrating to the sub dermal vascular plexus. Another method uses radio frequency or ultrasound energy focused on adipose tissue to cause cell destruction and cell death. These methods tend to damage the melanocyte in the epidermis. The hyper thermic temperatures destroy the target tissues and leave the body to remove the dead cellular and other debris. Non-invasive heating techniques have also been used. These non-invasive methods have certain disadvantages as well (e.g. inhomogeneous soft tissue heating, creating of hot spots, panniculitis etc.), and have been used with varying degrees of success.
Accordingly, there is need for improved methods and systems for subcutaneous treatments. There is also a need to improve the energy flow through the tissue of treated patient to reduce or eliminate risks of overheating of non-target soft tissue, improve homogeneity of heating desired layer of soft tissue in order to prevent hot spots. Heating of soft tissue by an external source of energy may cause other undesired effect and health complications e.g. non-controlled heating or overheating of the soft tissue that is also needed to improve.